making reusable text object

Question

I want to simulate a multi-agent system with Blender. It's almost done, but I experience a problem.

System agents speak to each other by passing messages, and I want to pass messages between them. I considered a text object as container of these messages. There is no constraint on the number of agents.

I want to create one (or some) text object and reuse it many times, by only changing source and destination locations and body texts.

After some search, I realized, that there is no data_path that supports keyframe_insert() to change the body text. Beside that I found dynamic text, but my context is extremely different with that method's context.

I want to change text on every keyframe, and it depends on my simulation's input.

Answer 1

An application handler could be used to read subtitle data from your simulation module and display it by editing a text object.

import bpy
from bpy.app.handlers import persistent


@persistent
def frame_change(arg):
    print("Load Handler:", bpy.data.filepath)
    t = bpy.data.objects["Text"]
    # here get the text you want to display
    label = ("Frame # %d" % bpy.context.scene.frame_current)
    t.data.body = label

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(frame_change)